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Paranoid,

I asked for evidence that 88 Dirhams was being used in a Sharia court. Then you ask me to blame my 'brothers' for spreading disinformation.

A few posts ago you said you could provide evidence:

PARANOID wrote:You proved all those things successfully, but I already knew them. You said "well they cut hands depending on the seriousness of the case", I repeated for you that in Islam it's "serious" if the thief had no reason to steal, but did it anyway and stole something that costs 88 dirhams or above. You disagreed, but you never proved it. I can prove my claims, you can't yours.

Are you now saying you can't, after all, prove your claims?

As for your point about one mistake shouldn't cause a hand to be chopped off - well, I agree with you and so do the Sharia Judges.

Cheers,
Shafique

duplicate post

Actually Shafique, I meant I can prove to you the 1/4 dinar claim through lots of Islamic websites, all of them interpreting them as "Today if someone steals that mush, they should get this punishment". I don't have evidence that "today" 88 dirhams id the amount. Neither do you, but what I'm saying is my claims are the ones it seems most muslims believe.

shafique wrote:
As for your point about one mistake shouldn't cause a hand to be chopped off - well, I agree with you and so do the Sharia Judges.

Cheers,
Shafique

No. No they don't, as long as there are hands getting cut off at one point or another over theft in different cases, then Sharia law and the judges do not agree.

I have found new hadiths by Muhammed, saying "If someone steals an egg his hand should be chopped off,..." And he goes on to list these other things that are similar to the egg in value, and after each says "His hand should be chopped off"

The source for sharia law is not only the Quran, it's the Quran AND the sunnah. So you cannot completly ignore what the hadiths say, specially the ones which were narrated by people considered credible.

Ok Paranoid, let me just get your argument straight in my head - I want to be clear that I'm answering your query/objections.

1. I think you are saying that chopping any person's hand off for theft is unjustified and barbaric. Theives should not be punished in this way.

Is this your argument?

2. Then you point to numerous hadith that Islam teaches that thieves who intentionally steal, are of sound mind, don't have extenuating circumstances, don't steal in full view of everyone AND steal an item of value of above a nominal small amout (1/4 dinar, 88 dirhams, or an egg) MUST have their hands chopped off.

Is this your view?


Assuming you answer yes to the questions above, let me answer you.

For 1. let me use another analogy. If I want to protect my wife's diamond jewellery by placing them in a box with poisonous snakes and then post signs everywhere that possessions are protected by poisonous snakes - will I be doing anything wrong? What if a theif ignores the signs and wants to try his luck and attempts to steal the jewels, but is bitten and is killed. Who is wrong - the snake, me, my wife or the Thief?

Is this barbaric? A deadly trap that kills someone trying to steal some bits of bling? Or is it suicide?

Leaving aside point 2. for now - what if you manage to convince everyone that chopping off anyone's hands is wrong. Let's say where this is in effect, they remove this punishment. What will be the result in your mind?

In my mind it will lead to:
a. happier thieves
b. unhappier victims of increased thefts

Do you disagree?

As for 2. - we only disagree on how the various hadith are being implemented - you seem to be insisting that your interpretation means all petty thieves have their hands lopped off. I have merely stated (repeatedly) that this is not and has not ever happened in practice and that your interpretations of the implementation of the Hadiths is faulty. If no one is doing what you THINK they are doing - is this still wrong?

I look forward to your considered answers.

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:Ok Paranoid, let me just get your argument straight in my head - I want to be clear that I'm answering your query/objections.

1. I think you are saying that chopping any person's hand off for theft is unjustified and barbaric. Theives should not be punished in this way.

Is this your argument?

Yes Shafique, that's pretty much what I'm saying. But I was also against the way the punishment was carried out and the amount of money involved. And am still considering all the hadiths from the Sunnah which you can't just claim are false since the narraters are all supposed credible people in Islam and muslims believe other hadiths from them are completly true.

2. Then you point to numerous hadith that Islam teaches that thieves who intentionally steal, are of sound mind, don't have extenuating circumstances, don't steal in full view of everyone AND steal an item of value of above a nominal small amout (1/4 dinar, 88 dirhams, or an egg) MUST have their hands chopped off.

Is this your view?

Yeah, I think Islam teaches that but muslims are probably acting differently. I never critisized muslims in the original post, I wondered how they were fine with following a religion that has such flaws (IMO)

Assuming you answer yes to the questions above, let me answer you.

For 1. let me use another analogy. If I want to protect my wife's diamond jewellery by placing them in a box with poisonous snakes and then post signs everywhere that possessions are protected by poisonous snakes - will I be doing anything wrong? What if a theif ignores the signs and wants to try his luck and attempts to steal the jewels, but is bitten and is killed. Who is wrong - the snake, me, my wife or the Thief?

Is this barbaric? A deadly trap that kills someone trying to steal some bits of bling? Or is it suicide?

Your analogy dosen't make the matter any less barbaric. If you think it's not, then like I said- fine. But I don't understand how you or anyone with your mindset don't realize that it's very inhumane to punish anyone like that over offences like theft- which CAN be fixed once you got the thief.

Not cutting hands dosen't mean you can't teach someone a lesson and prevent crime. That's like saying spanking is the only way to discipline a child, when there are numerous other ways to have the same effect from a different approach.

And removing that specific punishment dosen't mean that people will turn into thieves and will take over the place.

Leaving aside point 2. for now - what if you manage to convince everyone that chopping off anyone's hands is wrong. Let's say where this is in effect, they remove this punishment. What will be the result in your mind?

In my mind it will lead to:
a. happier thieves
b. unhappier victims of increased thefts

Do you disagree?

Yes, I disagree a lot. Look above. Justice can be served without us acting like we're still living in the middle ages.

As for 2. - we only disagree on how the various hadith are being implemented - you seem to be insisting that your interpretation means all petty thieves have their hands lopped off. I have merely stated (repeatedly) that this is not and has not ever happened in practice and that your interpretations of the implementation of the Hadiths is faulty. If no one is doing what you THINK they are doing - is this still wrong?

Like I said, if what is clearly written in the hadith and Quran about this matter isn't being practised- it simply makes the muslims not practising it rational, good people. But bad muslims in a way for disobeying god's laws.

Still it's wrong. Some punishments encouraged in Islam , specially this one, are wrong. This isn't justice, it's revenge. It does nothing to rehabilitate the criminal, and obviously the offended are encouraged to have no sence of forgiveness in Islam. That once a muslim is wronged, they should work thier way into seeing the offender sufferring to satisfy thier feelings of hate and blood thirst. Justice here is not about first giving back the stolen items, but about making the criminal suffer in a way that dosen't fit the crime.

Don't you agree that the punishment should fit the crime? Didn't you already agree that a mistake that dosen't ruin someone's life in a major way like murder or rape, shouldn't be punished by something that will be with the criminal forever? Surely after reading your last reply it seems you never meant it when you said you agreed.

Thanks Paranoid, I think we are getting somewhere.

I totally agree with you that if Islam teaches that all petty theives should have their hands cut off for a small amount, then this is wrong and barbaric.

You and I can disagree on the deterrent effect of capital punishment - fair enough. I think that anyone who decides to steal when they know what the penalty is going to be is taking a big risk and there will be lower rates of crime as a result. I leave it for you to decide whether Saudi and other Islamic states have less thievery and muggings than other similar countries (in terms of wealth) but who choose to only lock up theives.

Let us agree to disagree on what Islam actually teaches - I have stated that the implementation of Shariah Law in terms of stealing has been along the lines of the articles posted detailing the conditions.

All the Tafseers (explanations) of the Quran also do not state that all petty thieves have their hands cut off.

But I can certainly join you in condemning the barbaric implementation of the law that has never actually happened in practice - and congratulate the Muslims who have interpreted the Hadith in such a way that only serious thieves have their hands cut off.

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:I think that anyone who decides to steal when they know what the penalty is going to be is taking a big risk and there will be lower rates of crime as a result.

Shafique...

this is not true unfortunately - otherwise there would be an easy solution to keep crime rates low everywhere.
The typical criminal (at least a large percentage) never expects to get caught. Statistics show, that in countries where punishments are severe (like USA) crime rates are NOT lower, than in countries with rather mild punishments (like Germany).

The problem is that they are not hard enough in the USA. The jails there are no deterrant.

Perhaps they should start cutting thiefs' hands off,
rapists' you know what off, and
peodophilles' balls off.

The deterrent effect of punishment on crime rates merits its own thread!

My opinion is that the incidence of crime is a multi-factorial problem - of which the severity of punishment is only one fact (an important one though).

Crime at the end of the day is a risk-reward decision, either conciously or unconciously - is the benefit of the reward worth the risk.

Looking at robbery/thieving specifically:

On the 'benefit' side - we have a lot of factors, how poor the people are, the general morality of the population, the sense of inequity, how wealth is distributed in society etc.

On the risk side we have the liklihood of being caught, the punishment one may face and the way in which society will view/treat them (linked to general morality).

My view is that - ALL OTHER THINGS EQUAL - capital punishment will reduce the incidence of crime because it increases the risk of punishment. For thieving, the stats do bear this out - lower levels of muggings and general robbery in Saudi and here, for example. However, the other factors are also having an effect.

In the case of the US having high murder rates etc -despite having the death penalty does not affect my arguement. For in the US their are other factors at play - primarily the wide-spread availability of guns. Michael Moore's film 'Bowling for Columbine' graphically highlights the culture of the US vs its neighbour Canada in regards of the difference in deaths by gunshot in the two countries (even allowing for differences in population size).

I have no real inclination to research crime stats etc - I'll leave this to others to prove/disprove - I try and live within the laws of man and God and avoid punishments I'm not a judge or a lawyer, nor a politician - so don't think I'll be in a position to make or enforce any laws anytime soon either

I do however think that Capital Punishment is humane overall - it takes into account the feelings of the victims of crimes and potential vicitims of crimes that may have been committed. I am horrified though at the criminal justice systems that convict innocent people to death - I think that these should be reformed and stricter measures imposed before the ultimate penalty is imposed, and that it should be reserved for the severest punishments.

At the end of the day Capital Punishment is a tool that can be used well - and can be misused. We shouldn't ban hammers if some fools go around killing people with hammers - should we?

Cheers,
Shafique

this thread is far too long to read all of it, so i will just jump in with my own thoughts.

so what if muslims ban homosexuals and other things that we westeners would say 'meh' over. its their country, their rules!

just like in my country, my rules! and i read somwhere that its not the act of gay sex that s islam, more its the thought that 2 men can 'love' eachother. cos even with my liberal views, thats pretty queer, pardon the pun!

if you are interested in some 'highly factual' islam discussion, then go to utube, theres a guy on there who has many of utubes highest rated vido blogs regarding islam, and what he feels is their attempt to islamise europe, by using europes freedom of speech against them. sound familiar to anyone?

Chopping off the hands as punishment for robbery

Islam prescribes chopping off the hands of the convicted robber. The Glorious Qur’an says in Surah Maidah:
"As to the thief, male or female, cut off his or her hands:a punishment by way
of example, from Allah, for their crime: and Allah is Exalted in power, full of wisdom."
[ Al-Qur’an 5:38]
The non-Muslim may say, "Chopping off the hands in this 20th century. Islam is a barbaric and ruthless religion!"

Results achieved when Islamic Shariah Implemented

America is supposed to be one of the most advanced countries in the world. Unfortunately it also has one of the highest rates of crime, theft, and robbery. Suppose the Islamic shariah is implemented in America i.e. every rich person gives Zakaat ( 2.5% of his savings in charity above 85 grams of gold every lunar year), and every convicted robber has his or her hands chopped off as a punishment. Will the rate of theft and robbery in America increase, remain same or decrease? Naturally it will decrease. Moreover the existence of such a stringent law would discourage many a potential robber.

I agree that the amount of theft that takes place in the world today is so tremendous that if you chop off the hands of all the thieves, there will be tens of thousands of people whose hands will be chopped off. The point here is that the moment you implement this law the rate of theft will decline immediately. The potential robber would give it a serious thought before jeopardizing his limbs. The mere thought of the punishment itself will discourage majority of the robbers. There will barely be a few who would rob. Hence only a few person’s hands would be chopped off but millions would live peacefully without fear of being robbed.

Islamic Shariah is therefore practical, and achieves results

uaebadoo wrote:
Islamic Shariah is therefore practical, and achieves results

through what means does shariah achieve this exactly? and also do you have any statistics/factual examples about your statements?

see

PARANOID wrote: killing those who convert from Islam

Read this my friend


http://www.islamonline.net/English/cont ... e01d.shtml

PARANOID wrote:killing married men who cheat on thier wives by stoning them to death ?

Read this


http://www.understanding-islam.com/rela ... e&raid=426

PARANOID wrote:killing gays and lesbians?

My friend, this is against the Nature of human being, God created Men and Women to complete each other, If you allow a man to have a sexual relation with another man, then is it ok to that you can have sex with your mother or your sister, ofcourse not, you see if we go this way we become humans with no morals and values and we live the life of animals

You can hardly compare incest with being gay. Plus most people these days have a lack of morals. And FYI the human being is the worst 'animal' there is.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, each to their own, if it's not bothering of hurting anyone why do you care?

Agree, incest is deemed bad in most cultures both as it is clearly worrying from a psychological viewpoint, but also as not spreading the gene pool widely enough causes a massive increase in the number of birth defects and infant mortality.

This clearly isn't an issue for gay couples of either gender.

But, hey, if an ancient book tells you it's wrong then who are we to argue? It's not like anything has changed since those times.

Nice one Scot.

The ancient book u r talking about is valid for all the times, and it is proven:
http://www.miraclesofthequran.com/

Sorry but I disagree, the Bible, Koran etc were all still written by the hand of 'man' and can therefore be flawed, because 'man' is not perfect and everything is open to interpretation. They cannot reflect the ever changing times, society etc.

Plus exactly the same things were said about the Bible, google The Bible Code!

It depends what your beliefs are.

I believe in the religion of humanity and mankind.

I'll just play Devils Advocate.

mods please close this topic, now it getting a little sensitive

Chocoholic wrote:Sorry but I disagree, the Bible, Koran etc were all still written by the hand of 'man' and can therefore be flawed, because 'man' is not perfect and everything is open to interpretation. They cannot reflect the ever changing times, society etc.

Agree with Chocs that all that is written by man is flawed.

I personally do not believe in any 'Quran code' etc.

However, one point to bear in mind concerning the Quran - it claims to be the literal word of God and is primarily an Oral revelation - the writing down of it is to make it portable, but the Quran was revealed word for word and since the revelation it has remained intact, and the language it was revealed in continues to be understood by a greater number in each generation.

Compare that with other holy books who do not make the claim to be word-for-word revelations, and whose original languages have had decreasing numbers understanding them each generation (eg for Hebrew, the language had no native speakers a few decades ago and had to be re-constructed - with some words taken from Arabic)

Whilst it is debateable whether the claims of the Quran are true, what isn't debateable is the fact it hasn't changed and Arabic remains the only language that is more widely understood now than 1000 years ago (say) - all other languages from that period would be unintelligible to current day speakers (that goes for Greek, English, Italian, French etc)

Cheers,
Shafique

nice to see you back Shaf

Thanks for the post interesting as always

shafique wrote:
Agree with Chocs that all that is written by man is flawed.

I personally do not believe in any 'Quran code' etc.

However, one point to bear in mind concerning the Quran - it claims to be the literal word of God and is primarily an Oral revelation - the writing down of it is to make it portable, but the Quran was revealed word for word and since the revelation it has remained intact, and the language it was revealed in continues to be understood by a greater number in each generation.

Compare that with other holy books who do not make the claim to be word-for-word revelations, and whose original languages have had decreasing numbers understanding them each generation (eg for Hebrew, the language had no native speakers a few decades ago and had to be re-constructed - with some words taken from Arabic)

Whilst it is debateable whether the claims of the Quran are true, what isn't debateable is the fact it hasn't changed and Arabic remains the only language that is more widely understood now than 1000 years ago (say) - all other languages from that period would be unintelligible to current day speakers (that goes for Greek, English, Italian, French etc)

Cheers,
Shafique

Well there is Sanskrit which is the language of the scriptures of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Jainism. This has also not changed much since it's classical period and Sanskrit is widely spoken in India still.

I think any claims of one being the true word of God run the risk of bringing up the dilemma of standing amongst the many others that claim to be the true word of God. Like Homer wisely said (Simpson that is, not the Greek) '"Suppose we've chosen the wrong god. Every time we go to church we're just making him madder and madder".

I think they all have touched on the same source and principle, but the culture of the area and the tradition of the time in which the texts were worded has been a strong influence as well. None has a monopoly though.

Shafique -Good to see you back as well habibi.

Hiya folks - good to be back occasionally. Currently on business in Turkey - in historic Istanbul. Had a little time on my hands and thought I'd check out the old haunt of Dubai Forums!

Scot [sorry, I mean Jabba!] - Sanskrit of the Hindu scriptures is not widely spoken and is largely only known by scholars and a few pockets of people. See this extract from wikipedia's entry for Sanskrit:



Revival attempts

The 1991 Indian census reported 49,736 fluent speakers of Sanskrit. Since the 1990s, efforts to revive spoken Sanskrit have been increasing. Many organizations like the Samskrta Bharati are conducting Speak Sanskrit workshops to popularize the language. The CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) in India has made Sanskrit a third language (though it is an option for the school to adopt it or not, the other choice being the state's own official language) in the schools it governs. In such schools, learning Sanskrit is an option for grades 5 to 8 (Classes V to VIII). This is true of most schools, including but not limited to Christian missionary schools, affiliated to the ICSE board too, especially in those states where the official language is Hindi. Sudharma, the only daily newspaper in Sanskrit has been published out of Mysore in India since the year 1970.

Sanskrit is spoken natively by the population in Mattur village in central Karnataka. Inhabitants of all castes learn Sanskrit starting in childhood and converse in the language. [2]

Whilst Hindus will recite prayers in Sanskrit and hold services in that language, my understanding is it remains a largely liturgical language and the native speakers of the time the scriptures were written down would not be understandable to modern-day Indians.

There are 'classical', 'vedic' and modern dialects of sanskrit.

The remarkable thing about the Quran and Arabic is that the classical arabic of the Quran is still understandable today by Arabic speakers - and the numbers of people who still comprehend and speak this language has increased generation by generation, whilst all other languages from a similar period have decreased in numbers of people speaking and understanding that form (i.e. other languages have changed to the extent that the old classical languages aren't understood or spoken any more)

Cheers,
Shafique

ps - at the end of the article on Sanskrit on wiki:

Computational linguistics

There have been suggestions to use Sanskrit as a metalanguage for knowledge representation in e.g. machine translation, and other areas of natural language processing because of its highly regular structure.[7] This is due to Classical Sanskrit being a regularized, prescriptivist form abstracted from the much more irregular and richer Vedic Sanskrit. This levelling of the grammar of Classical Sanskrit occurred during the Brahmana phase, after the language had fallen out of popular use.


So it appears that 'Classical Sanskrit' imposed rules and regulations on the older 'Vedic Sanskrit' to make it more structured.

and the main point, that this re-working of Sanskrit took place after people stopped speaking it as an every-day language.

This has echoes of the revival of Hebrew as a language (which took place in the 20th century)

Interesting stuff - I had to look these facts up, so I have learnt something new as well!

Cheers,
Shafique

shafique wrote:Hiya folks - good to be back occasionally. Currently on business in Turkey - in historic Istanbul. Had a little time on my hands and thought I'd check out the old haunt of Dubai Forums!

Scot - Sanskrit of the Hindu scriptures is not widely spoken and is largely only known by scholars and a few pockets of people. See this extract from wikipedia's entry for Sanskrit:

I would stand corrected - but as you say it was scot's mistake anyway

Anyway not being one to lay down to easily - I was going to raise lao tzu or Confucius, but alas it was originally penned in a very ancient Chinese dialect not understood by a large majority of modern Chinese.

shafique wrote:Hiya folks - good to be back occasionally. Currently on business in Turkey - in historic Istanbul.

Interesting fact with Turkey - when (and it looks quite likely) Turkey joins the EU, Europe will be neighbors with Iraq, Iran, Syria and Georgia.

Apologies to Scott!

Jabba it was you that was wrong

Cheers,
Shafique